Tag Archives: Supreme Court

This fine article was an eye-opener for me. To many of us, it first seemed Gorsuch, though conservative, had a good record and “was the best we could get” under the circumstances.

(1) FACTS: The company truck’s brakes were defective or improperly maintained. Brake lines “freeze” because there is water in the brake lines; brake fluid does not freeze. The company was negligent, possibly criminally so if they had been on trial. They were derelict in their responsibility and promise to provide help in a timely manner in freezing weather. They ignored the driver’s repeated calls for help and his statement that his legs were becoming numb and he was having trouble breathing – the truck cab heater was defective too, and he was almost out of gas.

(2) Gorsuch ignored the responsibilities of the company in the matter, concentrating instead on what he presumed were the driver’s “duties.” Gorsuch ignored the health and safely of the driver. Every judge makes bad decisions, later to be regretted, but there’s an even more telling problem with this man.

(3) The article states: “Gorsuch was demonstrating his firm belief in the principle that the actual words of a law should be strictly applied by the court. This doctrine, often referred to as textualism, stands for the proposition that it is up to the legislature to make the law and is up to judges to strictly apply the actual words of the law. “

OUT OF ALL the considerations with which the law provides us, not least of which is following California Motor Vehicle statutes and protecting the health and safety of the driver and the public, Gorsuch focused on insubordination and dereliction of duty because the dispatcher ordered the driver to remain in the freezing truck.

(4) In other words, like Scalia, here is another man who, under the textualism doctrine, cherry-picks his statutes in order to reach a verdict that is politically and personally pleasing to himself.

CONCLUSION: Gorsuch is not qualified to be a judge, period. Until we get a fair-minded candidate who shows an ability to look at all the facts, prioritize them and evaluate them in the broader context of all US law, in order from trivial to essential, we should block GOP nominees for the ninth SCOTUS chair until Hell freezes over, if that’s what it takes to get a nominee committed to preserve and protect the Constitution and the individual rights of its citizens.

“There is a legitimate concern about large institutions, be they government or others, who haven’t really delivered the America everybody thought we were on our way to,” acknowledged John R. McKernan Jr., a former Maine governor who leads the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. But, he said, that fear is “totally misplaced” when it comes to the Common Core.

This interesting article mainly focuses on the opposition to the Common Core educational approach, which is opposed by Tea Party conservatives who want to replace public schools wholesale with privately funded schools whose curricula they can control, and by some liberal groups, such as teachers, who want to see a divorce between educational testing and onerous teacher performance evaluations.

The opposition to the Common Core also captures another shift since the Bush administration: While long contemptuous of an expanding federal government, some Republican activists are growing wary of big business, too, including figures like Bill Gates, the billionaire Microsoft founder whose foundation supported the development of the standards.

The facts of the matter are clear. Government hasn’t adequately delivered on its promises of equality, fairness, equal access, and equal opportunity for all to achieve the American Dream.

The elephant in the room here is Big Business. Somewhat arbitrarily, we can map the start of The Big Rip with the dismantling of the old Anti-trust laws, which happened, counterintuitively, in the Democratic Clinton Administration. This breached the geologist’s “angle of repose,” that steepest angle of a debris slope at which a boulder, or a massive pileup, will not slide downhill.

We’ve watched the buildup of a new breed of corporate and financial giants who dwarfed the old “military-industrial complex,” about which Eisenhower warned our nation. We saw monster rogue corporations like Enron. In 2008 we saw the established premier banking cartels of the country almost bring the country and economy to its knees, and the world with it: Chase-JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citibank, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Countrywide, almost every big name financial institution you can think of, and more that you can’t.

Recently, the right-biased Supreme Court handed down its infamous Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions. The decision was manna from heaven for the Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch (“Mr. Coal Is Your Friend”) billionaires and their corporate empires. The Kochs can contribute half a trillion dollars to state and federal election campaigns, and I can contribute $25 annually.

The law, in its majesty, has decreed that corporations, being people, are finally able to participate equally with me and you.

Big Government has not delivered on all its promises; NO. But Big Business has delivered on its promise to dismantle democracy, freedom of speech, and the American Dream. If anybody had been listening, they’ve been warning us all along.

The nation will soon become even more polarized with the resignation of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, 75, and anticipated resignation of ailing Justice William Rehnquist, 80.

Religious conservatives are viewing this as a golden opportunity to remodel the United States to more closely fit their religious political views. Liberals, civil libertarians and church-vs-state separatists fear loss of ground held or gained in the last several decades. As the Court goes, there could be big losses for civil rights, abortion rights, women’s rights, gay rights, freedom of expression and impartial education of future generations.Continue reading →

“WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” …

The Supreme Court ruled this week that the government can’t detain illegal aliens indefinitely. The Friday, June 29 version of the story published by the New York Times put it this way:

“Washington — In its second decision this week affirming the rights of immigrants, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the government may not detain deportable aliens indefinitely simply for the lack of a country willing to take them.”